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A perfectly rational world?
Conventional economic theory assumes perfect knowledge – of prices, markets and people. From this knowledge it extracts a “rational economic order” – a pattern to explain how economies work and how economic agents (e.g., buyers and sellers) interact. It is a theory that attempts to explain the production, consumption, and transfer of wealth.
Conventional economic (and business) thought focuses on elements from only the physical realm – such as resources, commodities and technologies. It does not extend to the mental or conscious realm.
Conventionally, wealth is seen as nothing more than what we have manifested in the physical realm.
A bigger view of economics
George Shackle was the first economist to challenge that the “algebra of business” is not a deterministic, linear science. He felt that uncertainty was a truth of business and economics, and that “perfect knowledge” of our world and how it works was not “real”.
An economic theory for Innerpreneurs
Shackle saw business as an “originative art” and that the possible outcomes of doing business were “unlistable”. He did not see business as having a set form or result (i.e., x + y = success!). He did not see business as creation of the external world.
Shackle saw the process of business more like “the poet-architect-adventurer who sees before him a landscape inexhaustibly rich in suggestions and materials for making things, for making works of literature, art or technology.”
Shackle felt our knowledge to create came from within our Self, and not from the external world. He felt business and the economy simply could not be understood by using “perfect knowledge” or “rational theories”. He saw that we are not perfectly logical creatures and we do not live in a flawlessly rational world.
Shackle may not have used the term Innerpreneur, but he, like us, saw business (and the economics of it) as the process of tapping into the world of ideas, and from an inner knowing, finding order and pattern to create.
This post was inspired by Phillip Dignan’s thoughts in Secrets of the Wealthy Mind.
photo credit: las – initially